HOW MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE WILL BE MURDERED BY BLACKS TODAY?..........THE LOOTING ACROSS AMERICA is as black as the staggering murder and crime rates of BLACKS ACROSS AMERICA. Black Lives Matter? NO LIFE MATTERS TO BLACKS!

Monday, November 9, 2015

MICHELLE MALKIN and PANEL DISCUSS THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICA'S BEST AND BRIGHTEST - THE HOAX OF GUEST WORKER ABUSE IN AMERICA WHERE NO LEGAL NEED APPLY!

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush... Is that news to you???

Never have the rich increased their wealth so quickly as in America since the financial crash of 2008. But side by side with the amassing of previously unthinkable private fortunes,the infrastructure of America is crumbling, education, health care and other social services are starved of funding, and the living standards of the vast majority of the population, the working people who produce the wealth, are declining.

Malkin to discuss new book, joined by fired Disney techie

WASHINGTON, DC (November 9, 2015)) — Guest worker visas have become an issue in the presidential campaign due to the firing of hundreds of American tech workers by some of American's most recognizable companies.

Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist syndicated in more than 100 papers, Fox News commentator, and New York Times bestselling author. She is founder of Hot Air and Twitchy.com.

John Miano, an attorney with 30 years of programming experience and founder of the Programmers’ Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional workers. Miano is a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies.

Leo Perrero, a 20-year veteran of the IT field who until last year was an Information Technology Engineer for Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

"A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages."

THERE IS ! NO ! BILLIONAIRE IN AMERICA THAT DOES NOT WANT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S NAFTA OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY AND NO LIMITS ON IMPORTING LABOR! IT'S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!

The #1 New York Times bestselling author and firebrand syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin sets her sights on the corrupt businessmen, politicians, and lobbyists flooding our borders and selling out America’s best and brightest workers.In Sold Out, Michelle Malkin and John Miano reveal the worst perpetrators screwing America’s high-skilled workers, how and why they’re doing it—and what we must do to stop them. In this book, they will name names and expose the lies of those who pretend to champion the middle class, while aiding and abetting massive layoffs of highly skilled American workers in favor of cheap foreign labor. Malkin and Miano will explode some of the most commonly told myths spread in the media like these:

Lie #1: America is suffering from an apocalyptic “shortage” of science, technology, engineering, and math workers.

Lie #2: US companies cannot function without an unlimited injection of the most “highly skilled” and “highly educated” foreign workers, who offer intellectual capital and entrepreneurial energy that American workers can’t match.

Lie #3: America’s best and brightest talents are protected because employers are required to demonstrate that they’ve made every effort to hire American citizens before resorting to foreign labor.

For too long, open-borders tech billionaires and their political enablers have escaped tough public scrutiny of their means and motives. Sold Out is an indictment of not only political corruption in Washington, but also the journalistic malpractice that enables it. It’s time to trade the whitewash for solvent. American workers deserve better and the public deserves the unvarnished truth.

THE ENTIRE REASON BEHIND AMNESTY IS TOO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED!

"Placed within this context, the essential class logic of the spending cuts, attacks on wages and social conditions and the incessant demands for labour market “restructuring” becomes clear. Viewed from the standpoint of the process of profit accumulation—the driving force of the capitalist economy—government spending on social services, as well as increases in real wages, represent a drain on the wealth that would otherwise be available to capital in the form of profit, and must be driven down."

November 11, 2015, 07:30 am

Immigration policy is being used to pink-slip American workers

By Jon Feere, contributor

Think Stock

Immigration policy impacts Americans of all skillsets and education levels. It is often incorrectly assumed that our immigration system only brings in low-skilled laborers who compete with blue collar Americans in an increasingly difficult job market. Many politicians, whose jobs are not threated by foreign labor, often welcome mass immigration; in their minds, high levels of immigration means cheaper landscapers, housekeepers and au pairs. Elites in the halls of Congress and in many of the nation's newsrooms simply don't care about the impact low-skilled immigration has on American workers.

But some are starting to take notice about the impact of our nation's immigration policy on high-skilled Americans who work in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. The New York Times recently ran an interesting expose titled "Pink Slips at Disney. But First, Training Foreign Replacements," detailing how American tech workers were replaced by foreign laborers through the H-1B program. It was a follow-up to Computerworld's piece, "Fury rises at Disney over use of foreign workers." The American workers — one of whom noted that he had received a pay raise and the highest possible performance review — were told they had to train their foreign replacements or face repercussions. "Some of these folks were literally flown in the day before to take over the exact same job I was doing," explained one worker.

This troubling trend is not limited to Disney. Similar replacements were reported at Toys "R" Us, Southern California Edison, Cengage Learning, Pfizer and other companies. Professor Ron Hira of Howard University says that the H-1B program "has created a highly lucrative business model of bringing in cheaper H-1B workers to substitute for Americans."
If journalists and politicians can understand the impact H-1B visas have on high-skilled Americans, there is reason to be optimistic that they will eventually come around to understanding the negative impact mass, low-skilled immigration has on other American workers.

The Center for Immigration Studies is hosting a panel discussion this Thursday focusing on the impact of our nation's immigration policies on American tech workers. Discussion will center on a new book authored by Michelle Malkin and John Miano titled Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires and Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasals Are Screwing America's Best and Brightest Workers. (The event is open to the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 12, 2015, at 2:00 p.m., but give us a call if you plan to stop by so we can try to hold a space for you.)

Speaking at the panel discussion will be co-author Michelle Malkin, a conservative columnist syndicated in more than 100 newspapers, Fox News commentator and New York Times bestselling author. She is founder of Hot Air and Twitchy.com. Also speaking will be co-author John Miano, an attorney with 30 years of programming experience and founder of the Programmers Guild, an organization committed to advancing the interests of technical and professional workers. Miano is also a fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies.

Additionally, the panel will include Leo Perrero, a 20-year veteran of the information technology (IT) field and a former information technology engineer at Walt Disney World who was recently fired and replaced by a foreign worker. Perrero was recently interviewed by an ABC affiliate in Florida about his experience at Disney, and the video is worth watching.

The book, Sold Out, shines a light on the right-wing and left-wing groups and politicians that promote the H-1B program (and high immigration, generally) and makes the case that purported shortages of American workers do not exist and that there is nothing special about the H-1B visa-holders who are being welcomed into the country (unless you consider "working for less" to be a special trait). The book frames the immigration issue in a way few books do, it's chock full of compelling case studies and data, and it offers about 100 pages of endnotes to back up the research.

Those who do not work in the STEM field may feel inclined to ignore this book, but workers in all fields will learn that their jobs are not necessarily safe from the mass immigration agenda that runs deep in Washington. American workers should know who is behind the scenes, pulling the strings and this book names names.
The issue of American workers being replaced by foreigners is one that is bound to be a hot topic during this election season, as many of the candidates have taken very strong positions on the H-1B program. For example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wants to triple the number of H-1B visas issued each year, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has proposed quintupling the number — though he seems to be discovering that his position is unpopular. The Democratic candidates have not come out against the H-1B program or attempted to justify how it is being used; they're simply hoping talk about the H-1B program just goes away. Those who profit off the H-1B program are hoping the same thing.
But the more the public knows about how our nation's immigration policy is being used to replace American workers, the more quickly the mass immigration advocates will be stopped in their tracks.

Feere is the legal policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies.

http://www.heritage.org/events/2015/11/lawlessOverview: In Lawless, George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein offers a scholarly and unsettling account of how the Obama Administration has undermined the Constitution and the rule of law. He documents how the President has presided over one constitutional debacle after another – from Obamacare to unauthorized wars in the Middle East to attempts to strip property owners, college students, religious groups, and conservative political activists of their rights, and more.

Respect for the Constitution’s separation of powers has been violated time and again. Whether in amending Obamacare on the fly or signing a memorandum legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, the current Administration ignores not only Congress, but also the Constitution’s critical checks and balances.

In Lawless, Professor Bernstein shows how the Constitution as well as the President’s own stated principles have been betrayed. In doing so, serious and potentially permanent damage has been done to our constitutional system and repairs must be addressed by the next President of the United States.Obama to Wannabe Illegals: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
By Mark Krikorian

In response the surge of Central Americans sneaking into Texas in the summer of 2014, the Obama administration launched an ad campaign in the sending countries earlier this year to stem the flow. The radio and TV spots assert that "there are no permits for the people trying to cross the border without papers" and promise "the immediate deportation of those trying to cross the border without documents."

None of it is true. There are permits for illegal-alien minors and families. Formally known as Notices to Appear but known colloquially in Spanish as permisos, they require the aliens to present themselves to immigration authorities by a certain date, until which they have temporary legal status. That gives them time enough to travel to join their relatives and disappear into the existing illegal population. And disappear they do, since, despite the tough promises, virtually none of them are deported, immediately or otherwise.

So it should come as no surprise to read today's AP report, which begins this way:

Obama set to defy federal court on amnesty

Once again, President Obama is looking to defy Congress in implementing its immigration reform proposals.This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court to achieve it.

A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an injunction last June against the administration's regulatory plans to legalize millions of aliens in the U.S. illegally. The injunction was upheld by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, and the president's plan is now stalled while the administration works through the federal court system.Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations pertaining to green cards that would accomplish almost everything the president can't get from Congress or the courts. A leaked memo from DHS outlines four plans the administration is considering.Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:

The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness, with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system. As mentioned, the first plan the memo discusses basically entails giving EADs to anyone physically present in the country who until now has been prohibited from getting one. A major positive to this option, the memo reads, is that it would “address the needs of some of the intended deferred action population.” Although DHS doesn’t say it expressly, included here would be those 4.3 million people covered by the president’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs whose benefits were supposed to have been halted in the Hanen decision. On top of working around the Hanen injunction, this DHS plan would also dole out unrestricted EADs to those on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as H-1B-holders (their work authorizations being tied to their employers) and another 5 to 6 million illegal aliens thus far not covered by any of the President’s deferred action amnesty programs. By claiming absolute authority to grant work authorization to any alien, regardless of status, DHS is in effect claiming it can unilaterally de-couple the 1986 IRCA work authorization statutes from the main body of U.S. visa law. While DHS must still observe the statutory requirements for issuing visas, the emerging doctrine concedes, the administration now claims unprecedented discretionary power to permit anyone inside our borders to work.

Get a load of what the DHS bureaucrats think about illegals working in the U.S.:

The anonymous DHS policymakers state that a positive for this option is that it “could cover a greater number of individuals.” In a strikingly conclusory bit of bureaucratese, they state that because illegal aliens working in the country “have already had the US labor market tested” it has been “demonstrat[ed] that their future employment won’t adversely affect US workers.” The labor market, in other words, has already been stress-tested through decades of foreign-labor dumping and the American working-class, which disproportionately includes minorities, working mothers, the elderly, and students, is doing just fine. Apparently, the fact that 66 million Americans and legal aliens are currently unemployed or out of the job-market was not a discussion point at the DHS “Retreat.”

Smith concludes: "Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who’ve broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016."I'm not sure that judge in Texas will let the administration get away with this. When the government began handing out green cards anyway in defiance of the injunction, the judge, Andrew Hanen, threatened to arrest the lot of them for contempt. He forced the government to recall the green cards immediately. There will be no circumventing the law in his court.But the plans may be untouchable because they don't directly stem from the series of executive orders currently being adjudicated. Of course, any plan to blanket the country in work permits for illegals will be challenged in court. But eventually, the administration may find a friendly judge who gives it the go-ahead.

Once again, President Obama is looking to defy Congress in implementing its immigration reform proposals.This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court to achieve it.A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an injunction last June against the administration's regulatory plans to legalize millions of aliens in the U.S. illegally. The injunction was upheld by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, and the president's plan is now stalled while the administration works through the federal court system.Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations pertaining to green cards that would accomplish almost everything the president can't get from Congress or the courts. A leaked memo from DHS outlines four plans the administration is considering.Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:

The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness, with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert our carefully wrought visa system. As mentioned, the first plan the memo discusses basically entails giving EADs to anyone physically present in the country who until now has been prohibited from getting one. A major positive to this option, the memo reads, is that it would “address the needs of some of the intended deferred action population.” Although DHS doesn’t say it expressly, included here would be those 4.3 million people covered by the president’s DAPA and Expanded DACA programs whose benefits were supposed to have been halted in the Hanen decision. On top of working around the Hanen injunction, this DHS plan would also dole out unrestricted EADs to those on temporary non-immigrant visas, such as H-1B-holders (their work authorizations being tied to their employers) and another 5 to 6 million illegal aliens thus far not covered by any of the President’s deferred action amnesty programs. By claiming absolute authority to grant work authorization to any alien, regardless of status, DHS is in effect claiming it can unilaterally de-couple the 1986 IRCA work authorization statutes from the main body of U.S. visa law. While DHS must still observe the statutory requirements for issuing visas, the emerging doctrine concedes, the administration now claims unprecedented discretionary power to permit anyone inside our borders to work.

Get a load of what the DHS bureaucrats think about illegals working in the U.S.:

The anonymous DHS policymakers state that a positive for this option is that it “could cover a greater number of individuals.” In a strikingly conclusory bit of bureaucratese, they state that because illegal aliens working in the country “have already had the US labor market tested” it has been “demonstrat[ed] that their future employment won’t adversely affect US workers.” The labor market, in other words, has already been stress-tested through decades of foreign-labor dumping and the American working-class, which disproportionately includes minorities, working mothers, the elderly, and students, is doing just fine. Apparently, the fact that 66 million Americans and legal aliens are currently unemployed or out of the job-market was not a discussion point at the DHS “Retreat.”

Smith concludes: "Bottom line: The memo foreshadows more tactical offensives in a giant administrative amnesty for all 12 million illegal aliens who’ve broken our immigration laws (and many other laws) that will emerge before the next inaugural in January 2016."I'm not sure that judge in Texas will let the administration get away with this. When the government began handing out green cards anyway in defiance of the injunction, the judge, Andrew Hanen, threatened to arrest the lot of them for contempt. He forced the government to recall the green cards immediately. There will be no circumventing the law in his court.But the plans may be untouchable because they don't directly stem from the series of executive orders currently being adjudicated. Of course, any plan to blanket the country in work permits for illegals will be challenged in court. But eventually, the administration may find a friendly judge who gives it the go-ahead.

A newly-leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reveals the Obama administration is seeking to sidestep a federal court injunction that suspended portions of the president’s amnesty-based initiatives known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In short, Obama is determined to impose his transformational agenda on the nation by any means necessary.

According to the Hill, the document outlining the administration’s attempt to thumb its nose at the rule of law was prepared at a DHS “Regulations Retreat” last June, four months after a preliminary injunction was initially imposed by Texas Judge Andrew Hanen and subsequently left in place by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit’s final ruling on that injunction, either confirming or reversing it, is expected to occur in a matter of days.Apparently the Obama administration couldn’t care less.
. . .http://canadafreepress.com/article/76535

TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THEIR LA RAZA "The Race" MEXICAN ILLEGAL PARTY BASE, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS RUTHLESSLY ASSAULTED THE AMERICAN WORKER, OUR LAWS ON HIRING ILLEGALS AND OUR BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation."

"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."

The Causes of Income Inequality

Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation. Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.

The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs.A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.

ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions. Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.

DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS

This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories. The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events. The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.

Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs. The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery. Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories. The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events. The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.

Obamacare open enrollment: A widening health care disaster for workers

3 November 2015

“All of Obama’s policies have been geared toward increasing social inequality. … The claim that the health care overhaul is an oasis of progress in this desert of social reaction is simply a lie”—
Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began November 1 for plans taking effect January 1. The coming year will be the third in which the ACA, signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, will be operational. The World Socialist Web Site’s assessment five years ago that the “reform” commonly known as Obamacare would usher in a frontal assault on the health care available to working people is being richly confirmed.
The ACA has nothing in common with universal health care. That was merely the slogan initially advanced to disguise a corporate-designed scheme to dramatically shift health care costs onto the working class.
The central component of the scheme, the “individual mandate,” requires that individuals and families without health insurance through their employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid obtain insurance or pay a tax penalty. Low-income people can qualify for modest tax subsidies to go toward premiums.
The uninsured are required to purchase coverage from private, for-profit insurance companies on the health care “exchanges” set up under the law. This vastly increases the market for private insurance firms without placing any real restraints on the prices they charge—a formula for windfall profits.
By the government’s own forecast, enrollees will face a 7.5 percent average premium rate increase in 2016. Other sources project rate hikes in excess of 20 percent. A recent study showed that many insurers are requesting double-digit rate increases next year and state insurance commissions are approving them.
A frenzy of mergers in the health care industry will fuel further premium increases. In the space of a few weeks in July, Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. merged in a $37 billion deal, and Anthem Inc. agreed to acquire Cigna Corp. for $54 billion. As a result, the five largest health insurers in the US were consolidated into three.
Drug makers Allergan and Pfizer are in the advanced stages of talks to merge and form the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, valued at $330 billion. The price of top brand name prescription drugs are already surging, having increased by 12.9 percent in 2013, the last year for which data is available.
Last week the giant drug store chain Walgreens announced a deal to take over one of its main competitors, Rite Aid, creating a mega-chain to compete with CVS for total domination of the market.
Premiums and drug costs are only one aspect of the burden to be borne by those purchasing coverage under the ACA. The average deductible for the lowest tier “bronze” plans on the exchanges was $5,200 in 2015, and the prevalence of such “high-deductible” plans is sure to expand in 2016. This means that aside from mandated “essential services,” such as certain forms of wellness care and screenings, no medical care is covered until the entire deductible is paid out of pocket. Co-payments for doctor visits and other services are also required.
Research published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 135 health plans in 34 state marketplaces available during last year’s open enrollment period. The study found that as of April 2015, 18 plans in nine states lacked in-network specialists for at least one specialty. These included obstetricians/gynecologists, dermatologists, cardiologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, neurologists, endocrinologists, rheumatologists and pulmonologists.
What all of this means is that a substantial portion of the 12 million people who have purchased coverage on the health care exchanges will be forced to self-ration medical care due to economic necessity. Workers and their children will forego doctor visits, prescriptions for life-saving medicines will go unfilled, needless suffering and deaths will occur.
This appalling state of affairs is not an unfortunate byproduct of the ACA. By design from its inception, the legislation has been crafted to cut costs for the government and corporations and boost the profits of the health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations and health care chains.
According to the big business parties and their corporate sponsors, Americans are living too long and health care costs are sucking up too much of the national wealth. There is a calculated drive to lower life expectancy for working people.
That is why the introduction of Obamacare has been accompanied by a concerted drive to restrict access to basic medical tests—that is, to ration health care for workers. In recent months, official bodies have called for reducing or delaying mammograms, pap smears, prostate tests and other standard screening procedures.
One indication of the catastrophic implications of the assault on health care is a recent study showing that since 1998, the death rate for middle-income white Americans age 45-54 has risen sharply, resulting in half a million deaths, comparable to the 650,000 Americans who have lost their lives from AIDS since 1981. Researchers point to suicides and substance abuse, driven by increasing financial stress, as the main contributing factors. The ACA will only increase the number of such tragedies.
The implications of Obamacare go far beyond those buying insurance on the ACA exchanges and extend to all segments of health care. The legislation is serving as a model for the assault on employer-sponsored health care coverage as well as the bedrock government-run programs Social Security and Medicare.
Today, approximately half of all Americans receive their health care coverage through their employers. Employer-paid health benefits was an important social gain wrested from the corporations by the struggles of workers in the aftermath of World War II and has been central in raising the living standards of working class families.
But the workings of Obamacare aim to destroy these gains. As Ezekiel Emanuel, a close ally of Obama and key architect of the ACA, predicted in 2009: “By 2025, few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.” These plans will give way to vouchers handed out to employees to purchase coverage on insurance exchanges, either those set up under the ACA or others.
In the current contract struggle of US autoworkers, the drive by the auto companies and their union partners to dismantle the “cradle-to-grave” medical coverage won by autoworkers and retirees is in line with the Obama administration’s policy of shifting health care costs to workers.
The recent budget deal between Obama and congressional Republicans rolls back a significant provision in the ACA, the requirement that businesses with more than 200 workers automatically enroll their employees for health insurance. And while employers are basically absolved of responsibility for providing insurance, fines for individuals for not obtaining insurance will rise substantially in 2016—to $695, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher.
Paul Ryan, the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, has advocated transforming Medicare into a voucher program and partially privatizing Social Security. That he is now presented as a “moderate” unifying force by the ruling elite and the media is an indication of how far to the right the political establishment in America has veered. The foundations are already being laid for the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security.
As the real content of Obamacare becomes clear to millions of workers and middle class people, who suddenly discover that they cannot get access to drugs or doctors and standard medical procedures are no longer covered by their insurance plans, there will be an explosive growth of social opposition.
The third year of the Affordable Care Act is the occasion to call the reactionary legislation by its rightful name: a health care counterrevolution. The only rational and progressive solution to the health care crisis in America is to replace the privately owned and controlled system with socialized medicine, in which the health care industry is nationalized, restructured, and placed under the democratic control of a workers government. This will make possible the provision of quality health care for all as a basic social right.
Kate Randall

"Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of

employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious

for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-

Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson

Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4

billion fortune is extracted from his international network of

sports apparel-producing sweatshops."

OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!

"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere. Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich.The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."

“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”

OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class

"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."

"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."

Richest one percent

controls nearly half of global wealth

In 2009, the total net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.27 trillion. Today, nearly six years into the so-called economic “recovery” fostered by the Obama administration, the wealthiest Americans have nearly doubled their hoard. The total wealth of the richest 400 Americans managed to reach new heights even while financial markets have been roiled by tumultuous swings.

The Forbes report notes that in 2015, “It was

harder than ever to join the 400. The price of

entry this year was $1.7 billion, the highest it’s been in the 33 years that Forbes has racked American wealth.” Forbes makes note that the wealth threshold was so high this year that 145 billionaires failed to make the list.

While a majority of billionaires have prospered, their wealth underwritten by the massive government bailouts of financial institutions and near-zero interest rates from the Federal Reserve, a significant fraction of the wealthy elite have lost ground in the turbulent stock markets of recent months.

The ratio of winners and losers among the billionaires was ten to one last year, but this year was much closer to 50-50. Forbes noted that the top three position-holders on the list, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, each saw a drop in their total net worth of at least 5 percent in the last year. This did nothing to threaten the position of Gates, number one at $76 billion, or Buffett, number two at $62 billion, but Ellison’s third-place position, with $47.5 billion, left him “only” $500 million ahead of the fourth-place multi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com.

The majority of those on the Forbes list were associated with some form of financial speculation, or with computer software and the Internet. According to the industry breakdown supplied by Forbes, its 400 include 126 engaged in investment, real estate and finance, 81 from computer technology and media, 36 from food and beverage, 32 from retail and fashion (including five members of the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart), 31 from oil & gas, 20 from health care, 19 from miscellaneous services (including six members of the Pritzker family, owners of Hyatt Hotels), and 19 from sports and gaming.

This left only 35 listed as making their fortunes in manufacturing, automotive, construction, and logistics. The largest manufacturing fortune is the $7.4 billion of Harold Kohler, whose company makes toilets and other plumbing fixtures. Perhaps that is symbolic, given the state of manufacturing in the United States, once the world leader in industry, but no longer.

The growth of financial parasitism has underwritten the wealth of many on the Forbes 400. In 1982, the first Forbes 400 list saw figures directly involved in finance making up only 4.4 percent of the total wealth on the list. As of today, this group now makes up more than 21 percent of billionaires on the list.

Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has held the number one spot on the Forbes 400 for 22 years, has less than 13 percent of his fortune in stock in the company he founded. According toForbes, the majority of Gates’ wealth is bound up in Cascade, the software mogul’s investment firm, which specializes in “investing in stocks, bonds, private equity and real estate.”

Besides the well-known super-rich of Silicon Valley like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with $33.3 billion and $32.6 billion, respectively) and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social media web site Facebook, the seventh wealthiest man in America with $40.3 billion in total assets, there are numerous other newly minted Internet billionaires, including the owners and co-owners of Uber, Airbnb, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, GoPro and GoDaddy.com.

Jeffrey Bezos, owner of the online retailer Amazon, saw the largest gain in wealth for the year, making $16 billion in 2015, placing his total net worth at $47 billion and catapulting him to fourth place. Nearly half of Bezos’ gains came within a single day last July, when his company announced gains in the second quarter, leading to a speculative frenzy which bid up stock values for Amazon by over 18 percent.

Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel RobsonWalton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4 billion fortune is extracted from his international network of sports apparel-producing sweatshops.

While safeguarding the ill-gotten wealth of the Forbes billionaires remains an ironclad principle of both the Republican and Democratic parties, working people throughout the US continue to suffer the brunt of attacks on their living standards. A US Census report released earlier this month shows that 14.8 percent of the US population lives in poverty; a figure that is unchanged from a year earlier. The Census findings show that 6.6 percent of the population lives in “deep poverty,” or less than half of the already unrealistically low official poverty line in the US.

Obama’s crony banksters face the guillotine

AMERICA’S DRIFT TOWARDS REVOLUTION:

The American people stand up to crooked politicians’ cronies, crooked unions and the Mexican occupation, crime TIDAL WAVE and welfare state in our openborders.

"The American elites, comfortable in their current lifestyle, had better wake up to the rumbling beneath their feet before the volcano erupts."

The nation’s population has grown by 35% since 1988; however the number of employed Americans has only increased by 27% while those who have dropped out and are no longer in the labor force has escalated by 50%. Further the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 61%.

OBAMA-CLINTONomics…. will it destroy this nation or will they simply hand us the tax bills fortheir newest bailouts and crimes?

THE RISE of BARACK OBAMA and the FALL of AMERICA: WHO WILL ULTIMATELY PAY FOR HIS LIES AND CRIMES?

Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.

These are only the most striking of a barrage of numbers reported in recent weeks, demonstrating that for the US financial aristocracy, the Crash of 2008 has been used toengineer a historic redistribution of wealth.

THE COMING GLOBAL MELTDOWN:

a nation pays the ultimate price for OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the death of the American middle-class

“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”

US poverty rate and income growth stagnated in 2014

By Niles Williamson 19 September 2015

The US Census Bureau released its annual income and poverty report this week which showed that median household income and the national poverty rate held steady between 2013 and 2014.

The report found that 14.8 percent of the country’s population lived in poverty in 2014, statistically unchanged from a year prior. Blacks had the highest poverty rate in 2014 at 26.2 percent, which was a one percentage point increase over 2013. Among children and teenagers under the age of 18, approximately 15.5 million, or 21.1 percent, lived in poverty.

OBAMANOMICS: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators

"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."

"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."

OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!

"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere.

Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."

“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”

“Feinberg, who as the Obama administration’s “pay tsar” rubber- stamped multimillion-dollar executive bonuses to Wall Street banks bailed out with taxpayer funds, will now be given power to slash workers’ benefits at his discretion.”

Top 1 percent own more than half of world’s wealth

By Patrick Martin 14 October 2015

A new report issued by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse finds that global wealth inequality continues to worsen and has reached a new milestone, with the top 1 percent owning more of the world’s assets than the bottom 99 percent combined.

Of the estimated $250 trillion in global assets, the top 1 percent owned almost exactly 50 percent, while the bottom 50 percent of humanity owned collectively less than 1 percent. The richest 10 percent owned 87.7 percent of the world’s wealth, leaving 12.3 percent for the bottom 90 percent of the population.

The Credit Suisse report focused not on the top 1 percent, but on a slightly smaller group, the 0.7 percent of adults with assets of more than 1 million US dollars. This figure includes both financial assets and real assets, such as homes, small businesses and other physical property.

The report’s eye-catching “Global Wealth Pyramid” divides the human race into four categories by wealth: 3.4 billion adults with net assets of less than $10,000; 1 billion with net assets from $10,000 to $100,000; 349 million with net assets from $100,000 to $1 million; and 34 million with net assets over $1 million.

The lowest category comprises 71 percent of all adults and owns only 3 percent of total wealth; the next-poorest group comprises 21 percent of adults and owns 12.5 percent of the wealth; above this is a group comprising 7.4 percent of adults and owning 39.4 of the wealth; and finally the top layer, 0.7 percent of adults owning 45.2 percent of the wealth.

This top layer, defined by the report as “high-net-worth individuals,” is itself divided very unequally, as shown in a second pyramid: 29.8 million with assets of $1 million to $5 million; 2.5 million with assets of $5 million to $10 million; 1.34 million with assets of $10 million to $50 million; and finally, 123,800 with assets over $50 million.

These 123,800 “ultra-high-net-worth individuals,” as the report calls them, are the true global financial aristocracy, exercising decisive sway not only over banks and corporations, but over governments and international institutions as well. Of these, nearly 59,000, almost half the total, live in the United States. Another quarter live in Europe (mainly Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy), followed by China and then Japan.

The Credit Suisse report notes the particularly rapid rise in inequality since the Wall Street crash of 2008 and relates it directly to the stock market boom that followed the bailout of the banks, initiated by the Bush administration and greatly expanded by the Obama administration. A key passage reads:

“There are strong reasons to think that the rise in wealth inequality since 2008 is mostly related to the rise in equity prices and to the size of financial assets in the United States and some other high-wealth countries, which together have pushed up the wealth of some of the richest countries and of many of the richest people around the world. The jump in the share of the top percentile to 50 percent this year exceeds the increase expected on the basis of any underlying upward trend. It is consistent, however, with the fact that financial assets continue to increase in relative importance and that the rise in the USD (US dollar) over the past year has given wealth inequality in the United States—which is very high by international standards—more weight in the overall global picture.”

In other words, deepening global economic inequality is being driven above all by American capitalism, with the United States being both the wealthiest and by far the most unequal country in the world. The US has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but a staggering 46 percent of the world’s millionaires.

Far from demonstrating the health of the US economy, this disproportionate growth of the super-rich resembles the spread of a cancer that is rapidly metastasizing, with fatal consequences for the entire social organism.

Never have the rich increased their wealth so quickly as in America since the financial crash of 2008. But side by side with the amassing of previously unthinkable private fortunes,the infrastructure of America is crumbling, education, health care and other social services are starved of funding, and the living standards of the vast majority of the population, the working people who produce the wealth, are declining.

The Credit Suisse report also calls attention to significant regional differences within the structure of global capitalism, focusing on the diverging fortunes of three main regions: North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Total global wealth declined slightly in 2015, according to the report, but only because the bank’s calculations were in US dollars, and thus were affected by the depreciation of the euro, the Japanese yen, the Russian ruble, the Canadian dollar and many other currencies against the US dollar.

US wealth rose $4.6 trillion, despite a global decline of $12.7 trillion, with Japan, Russia and the European Union countries showing the biggest drops, largely because of currency depreciation. Australia and Canada lost $1.5 trillion in wealth between them, a substantial drop for the two mid-sized economies, which are heavily dependent on resource extraction.

China, whose currency is loosely pegged to the dollar, saw a $1.5 trillion gain. But this has likely already evaporated, since the report is based on figures ending June 30, 2015 and the Chinese financial markets have plunged 25 percent since then, as the report’s foreword notes.

These disparities between countries, like the growing social disparities within countries, have immense significance for world politics. They are a major factor in the increasingly explosive character of international relations, particularly the conflicts between the major imperialist powers—the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain—and countries like Russia, China and Iran that are being targeted for their huge natural and human resources.

US imperialism uses both its preeminent military position and the role of the dollar, still the world’s main reserve currency, as weapons in seeking to offset its economic decline relative to its major rivals. America is both a social powder keg, with class tensions at home approaching the breaking point, and the most destabilizing force in world politics, seeking to maintain its position of global dominance by increasingly reckless and militaristic methods.